If this message is not displayed correctly click here
|
Issue 624 - April 10th - 14th 2023 - Expressly created for 4470 wine lovers,
professionals and opinion leaders from all over the world |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Today in Italy, 36 varieties of Piwi resistant vines, 18 red and 18 white varieties, are registered in the National Register of Vine Varieties for Wine. The regions that have authorized the cultivation of these varieties (in part or all) are Abruzzo, Bolzano Province, Emilia Romagna, Friuli Venezia Giulia, Lombardy, Marche, Piedmont, Trento Province and Veneto. There are 165 companies marketing wines made from these varieties, for a total of 290 wines and an estimated area of several thousand hectares. These are the numbers behind the birth of “Piwi Italia”, a new Italian section of “Piwi International”. |
|
|
|
|
Italy and France, that is, the two “superpowers” of world wine. One with its hundreds of appellations and grape varieties, one with its “few” but very large, and very famous, production territories, from Bordeaux to Burgundy, from Champagne to Provence, from the Loire to the Rhone Valley, to name the most important ones. Two different countries, but in which wine represents, for both, a founding cultural element, and a pillar of the economy and exports. But if in 2022 for both countries export growth was around +10% in value, looking at the numbers things are quite different, and they tell of how the scissor of unit value per liter is getting wider, to the advantage of the French, who in 2022 touched a value of 8.8 euros per liter (+16%), the highest ever. Italy, despite a slight growth in this parameter, stopped at 3.58 euros per liter. Less than half of France's. A parallel that emerges by comparing Istat data on Italian wine exports in 2022, analyzed by WineNews, and those of the Observatorio Español del Mercado del Vino. This a figure that states once again how much Italy must work to close a gap that, according to all market players now, but also critics, is now only “market”, and not quality, at all levels. With an even stronger difference if one considers the fact that both Italy, which exported a total of 7.87 billion euros worth of wine (+9.8%) for 21.9 million hectoliters (-0.4%), and France, which, in total, exported wine for 12.28 billion euros, with 13.9 million hectoliters (-4.5%) suffered from the same market dynamics related to inflation, high energy and raw materials prices and so on. And while moving up the average price per liter of French wine, sparkling wines, and specifically Champagne, make an important contribution, with transalpine bubbles surpassing a record 4.6 billion euros (+18.6%) for 237 million liters (+4,7%) with an average value of 19.6 euros per liter (+13.2%), the gap in value is also clear when looking at still wines alone, which at 999.7 million liters (-2.4%) for 7.3 billion euros (+7.4%), leave France with an average price of 7.3 euros per liter (+10%). |
|
|
|
|
On the table of institutions, as well as in the agendas of trade organizations, there are many dossiers that affect wine, in a more or less direct way. Among the priorities of winegrowers Fivi (Federazione Italiana Vignaioli Indipendenti, Italian Federation of Independent Winegrowers), as President Lorenzo Cesconi stressed to WineNews, are three main issues: the inclusion of the “Winegrower” category on the label, environmental and nutritional information, and health warnings. There are two objectives: to ensure transparency for consumers, and clear and simple rules for wineries. Starting from the assumption, reiterated by Fivi itself to the EU Parliament, that “wine is a natural product, born in a certain place at a certain time, unique and not reproducible, which educates the consumer” (in more detail). |
|
|
|
|
|
In the great world of “natural” wines, the topic of biodynamic is the one that, to this day, causes the most debate. For some, Rudolf Steiner’s ideas applied to the vineyard have no value, but for others, they are more than convincing, so much so that they have become a way of life, production and business. As told by the testimonies of producers and wineries featured in “Wine: the Future is Biodynamic”, a focus signed by Demeter Italia, the most important certification body on the subject, at “Vinitaly 2023”. Like Federica Camerani of the Corte Sant’Alda winery in Mezzane di Sotto, who chose biodynamic viticulture “when it was not yet fashionable”, in 1986. Another experience in the limelight is that of Patrick Uccelli, winemaker and enologist at the Dornach estate in Salorno. Also making a contribution is Camillo Zulli, technical director of Cantina Orsogna, a community with more than 300 winemakers in the green heart of Abruzzo, on the slopes of the Maiella. Sales of biodynamic wines? They are a niche, of course, but growing, thanks to a more aware consumer, as told by Alberto Farinasso, coordinator in charge of Velier SpA, a wine and spirits import company founded in Genoa by Luca Gargano under the manifesto of the “Triple A’s - farmers, artisans and artists”. |
|
|
|
|
|
Brepona, Vulpea, Moschina or Uva Gatta: what are we drinking tonight? This may be a question we will find in the future of Italian wines. These are just a few of the varieties at the center of the work of the “Graspo” association, founded by Aldo Lorenzoni, Giuseppe Carcereri and Luigino Bertolazzi, with a passion for active research on the front of the recovery of ancient abandoned grape varieties in the belief that biodiversity can be an important resource for the future of viticulture (in more detail). |
|
|
|
|
Since 2006, as those who travel frequently by air know, international authorities have limited the amount of liquids you can take in hand luggage to just 100 ml. Impossible, thus, to carry a small bottle of water, let alone wine. Unless you decide to embark it in the hold, or buy it in duty free. All of this, however, is set to change, because between 2024 and 2026, at least in Europe, thanks to technological upgrades to the scanners used at the gates, the 100 ml limit will end. And tourists, whether those who choose Italy just for a weekend getaway or those flying from one city to another on the Peninsula, will thus be able to take along the most coveted of souvenirs, a bottle of wine, in their hand luggage. But the novelty could also please those who move for business, obviously related to wine ... |
|
|
|
|
Constant light, constant temperature, constant pressure and constant currents. All at zero cost, with not insignificant savings on a winery's energy costs: the start-up Orygini involved the Consorzio di Tutela Vini Etna and the Faculty of Food Science and Technology at the University of Catania, to parameterize and measure any changes that take place in the aging in the winery or on the seabed, in the Marine Protected Area of the Cyclops Island, with the sinking of the wine cases starting July 12, 2022. |
|
|
|
|
